


It's Not That We're Scared (It's Just That It's Delicate)

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Lots of Angst, No Spoilers, post-4x09 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5700085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-4x09 major angst. A twist on one spec I keep seeing. Not THAT one. NO SPOILERS, in fact, this is almost decidedly what’s NOT going to happen.</p>
<p>“When she wakes up in the hospital, Felicity knows immediately that something is very wrong.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not That We're Scared (It's Just That It's Delicate)

 

_A/N: I’m sorry. This one is rough, but it scratched at my brain until I wrote it. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I’m happy to answer any questions via message/chat/whatev ([Tumblr](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/)) if anyone would like more details before they read._

_Title from “[Delicate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnL3NfhOsBM)” by Damien Rice._

**It’s Not That We’re Scared (It’s Just That It’s Delicate)**

When she wakes up in the hospital, Felicity knows immediately that something is very wrong.

Well, obviously something’s wrong. Nearly everything’s wrong, if she’s going solely on context clues. The drab wallpaper, the uncomfortable hospital bed, the way her mouth feels like sandpaper and tastes like hot garbage. Every single part of her aches, but her abdomen and lower back burn like they’ve been run through with a hot poker.

It’s more than that, though. Something’s off. She’s alive, but she’s alone.

“Baby?”

Until a few months ago, there was only one person in the whole world who called her that. And her heart drops just a little when it’s that person who’s peeking timidly through the door.

“Mom?” She reaches out on instinct for her glasses on the nightstand. The motion pulls at her sides painfully, but like a tiny miracle, the frames are right where they should be. When they’re a little fuzzy, she realizes they’re her back-up pair from home.

“Oh hon, you’re awake,” Her mother can’t hide her relief, but she also can’t mask something else, something darker that grates at the enthusiasm in her voice. The whole reaction seems false somehow, even to Felicity’s groggy brain, and it triggers the question she stops herself from blurting out immediately. _Where’s Oliver?_

“What happened?”

“My _baby_.” Her mother sounds like the very thought breaks her heart, and Felicity realizes she has no idea how long how many days Donna has folded herself into a hospital chair at her side, how long she’s been gone. How long _he’s_ been gone. “You got shot.”

Not that. That she remembers, vividly. How their bliss had dissolved into terror, how the glint of the diamond on her left hand had been whited out in flashes of bright light, how the staccato of gunshots had melted into the drumbeat of the Christmas carol.

It’s not the question she’s asking, the real one takes her a moment to screw up the courage. It feels like something inside her has shifted irreparably, and somehow she knows it’s more than just his absence. But she needs to take this one step at a time.

She takes silent assessment of her body. Fingers, toes, still there, still moving. She’s able to move her arms and legs, until they tug at her lower abdomen, which burns and pulls like no pain she’s ever felt before, even through the dull of the morphine. She tries to sit up, and knows immediately that it’s a bad idea.

“Felicity, don’t.” Donna shuffles to her bedside, giving her a kiss to the cheek that feels almost cursory and pressing a plastic box into her hand. “Here, the remote, you can make the bed go up.”

Once she’s righted, once she’s on a more even keel, there’s no stopping the questions. She has a messy head full of movie clips that feel like they could be memories or dreams. “How long?”

“Three weeks,” her mother answers, taking one of Felicity’s hands in hers to squeeze. They feel frail, colder than Felicity remembers, and they won’t stop shaking. “Almost a month. Baby, it’s so good to have you back.”

A _month_. Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s. _Star Wars_.

“Where’s Oliver?”

20-plus years of working in casinos and Donna Smoak still has one of the worst tells Felicity’s ever seen. Her eyes drop to her fingers, and she picks at her nail beds for just a second, though it’s long enough for Felicity to notice that her holiday manicure is all but chipped away.

“He’s on his way.”

Again, it’s not really an answer. She’s staring at her shoes now, and Felicity is shocked to see that they’re flats.

“Mom.” She waits until Donna lifts her eyes to make full contact, trying to solve the puzzle in her mother’s sad stare. When that doesn’t work, she levels her with as much severity as she can muster. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Donna pauses for another long second, narrowing her eyes as if trying to get some kind of read on her. When she does speak, it’s practically in a whisper.

“I just think maybe should just wait until…”

“Mom, what’s going on?” She’s as forceful as her weakened body will allow, and when her mother still can’t answer, it breaks what’s left of her hope. “ _Please_.”

“Honey, you took four bullets in total.” There’s a stammer that sounds like unshed tears when Donna starts explaining, her words shake and crumble like the metaphorical ground under Felicity’s feet, “There was damage, to your kidneys, and…”

Finally, she just hands her the medical file clipped to the foot of her bed.

“Was I…?” Felicity flips through the papers with shaking hands, because for some reason, it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It makes no sense – she’s been vigilant about her birth control since she was 16 years old – but she feels an acute ache for something that was never her’s in the first place.

A little girl, she can see her suddenly, clear as day (later on, she’ll blame the painkillers). The best of the both of them. A little girl who would look at her daddy like he hung the moon, would soften his whole face with her smile, would make him feel like a hero just by the way she marveled at his very existence.

But she’s not here. And neither is he. It occurs to her that none of the team is here, and Felicity hopes with everything she’s got that they’re not out there putting themselves in danger to save Oliver from his own grief.

She isn’t real, their little girl. And she never will be. “I wasn’t…pregnant?”

“No, honey…” Her mother sucks in a shuddering breath that sounds painful. “You weren’t pregnant.”

Everything fades out as static starts to buzz in her ears. She knows, somehow she knew, but it takes seeing the words “severe hemorrhaging” and “emergency hysterectomy” in black-and-white, right in front of her on a page that’s slowly going polka-dotted with her teardrops, until she lets herself believe it. And for all that’s just been thrown into chaos, there’s exactly one thing that makes total sense.

They cry a little more, and she doesn’t ask anything else about Oliver, she doesn’t have to. When her mother leaves the room again, Felicity feels a sudden, acute loneliness come over her. It’s vaguely familiar, and she’s almost certain that it’s more memory than dream. She presses the button on the morphine drip and lets the flow of drugs into her bloodstream press the last tears from her eyes, letting her vision go glassy, then dark.

* * *

When she wakes again, hours later, the sun has gone down. Her body is turned away from the door, but she knows he’s here, can feel the anxiety radiating off him and almost see his anguished expression before she rolls over gingerly to face him.

“Felicity.” Her name grates out of his throat like gravel, like he hasn’t said it in years.

“Oliver.” His comes out like a sob, she can’t help that much.

He doesn’t stop his tears from spilling over, so she pays hers no mind. “I thought I lost you.”

She remembers the words from Darhk’s gas chamber. “I’m here.” That moment had felt so life-changing, but the feeling had lasted just a few precious hours. Kind of like their first date. Now, she doesn’t even know which way is up.

He still looks at her like she’s everything he’s ever wanted, and her horrible brain butts in to remind her that she knows it’s not true. He’s not the one who choked on his toast when the Hoffmans started talking about pre-schools, and they hadn’t really talked about it, but some part of her has always known that in this particular race, he was waiting for her at the starting line. Maybe she’s the most selfish person in the world, but she wasn’t even sure she wanted it, until today.

She wonders when they found out, wonders if her mother had to tell him, or the other way around. She needs to know what he knows, needs to start talking about it soon, or she’s going to disintegrate.

“They told me…” It’s like he can read her mind, like he understands how much she needs to start piecing this together. Another tiny whimper leaves her mouth without her permission, and it spurs him to movement. He drags the chair over beside her bed, pressing a kiss to her forehead before sinking down beside her. “ _Baby_ …” The word forces the first real sob from her, and it tears at both her emotional and physical wounds. He twines his fingers around hers and she squeezes too tight.

“I’m so sorry.”

They say it at the same time, and oh, there’s something so tragic about that. But she hates that their grief isn’t the only thing that hangs over them in the silent, miserable moment. She hates him for not being there earlier, hates the way she can see more than exhaustion in the dark marks under his eyes, hates the way she knows only a handful of horrible things could have pulled him from her bedside.

The longer they pretend like it’s nothing, the bigger it becomes. “Where were you?” He hangs his head, and it draws her eyes to a chain around his neck. She traces it with her fingers, then tugs at it gently. “When I woke up, why weren’t you here?”

At the end of the chain hangs a ring, with an impressive diamond. She realizes it’s _hers_ , sucking in a breath at the same time he begins to speak. “I was in Central City.”

That’s not a lie. But it’s not the truth either.

Her fingers wrap around the ring. It’s warm from hanging against his heart.  Her hands itch, and she can’t tell if she wants to put it back on or because she doesn’t. “Why?”

“Felicity, I’m not sure it’s the time.” His hands reach up to try and clasp over hers, but she pulls away like she’s been singed.

“You all had plenty of time to keep secrets,” she snaps, and she’s not even sure who she’s angry with in that moment. It’s not like they could have told her. It’s not like she knows for sure that they didn’t try.

“You just woke up,” he pleads, and she hates him a tiny bit more in that moment for looking so earnest, like all his worry is truly for her. “Felicity, please.”

“It’ll be so much worse to drag it out.” She’s not sure why she wants this so bad, not sure why she’s hell-bent on putting them through even more trauma. But it feels like they might as well get it all out.  “You know it will, Oliver.”

He nods once, quickly, and answers before she’s ready. “I have a son.”

She’s not sure what she was expecting, but that wasn’t it. Suddenly, it’s even harder to breathe.

“How long?”

“I’ve known for a little over month, when we went to help Barry.” He answers both questions, somehow knowing which information she needs first. “Moira…paid her off when I was younger, made them disappear. He’s almost ten.”

Her heart aches, but at first it’s not for herself, it’s for Oliver and his son. His _son_. Ten years old, that kid already knows what it means to not have a father. Nothing will give that back, Moira took those memories from them both in the name of secrecy and public image and whatever twisted other reasons she had. Even as Felicity burns with indignity and betrayal at the knowledge that he had conceded to keeping this from her, she feels a pang in her chest for Oliver, for the splinters of him that she knows break off with each new tragedy.

“C’mere.” She threads her hands as far through his hair as she can reach, pulling his head down. It’s longer than she remembers, so is his stubble. He ducks his face into the crook of her neck and lets out a hot breath.

Then the ache shifts, just a little. A _month_. He’s known since before…

“When Darhk took me…“ He shudders at the memory but she doesn’t grip him any tighter. “When we sat in that cell and I said that marriage means getting through the hard times together, you knew then?”

“She didn’t want me to tell you.” At the mention of the unnamed woman, Felicity’s thought flit unconsciously to her mother, sitting in the waiting room. Donna Smoak has her flaws like anyone else, but Felicity knows there wasn’t much her mother wouldn’t have done to keep her safe.

“Well, you told me,” she says, and the words come out harsh. Even as one part of her heart is breaking, the other is ready to march to Central City and give this woman a piece of her mind. Harsh a reality though it may be, Moira Queen’s been dead for two years. She didn’t have to run right back and tell him, but she could at least give him the benefit of the doubt now.

He lifts his head then, to look her in the eye. “I went to say goodbye, in case she wouldn’t let me see him again.” There he goes again, sacrificing himself when no one’s asking. “I knew…I knew I had to tell you.”

His certainty reminds her of everything she still isn’t sure of. “Oliver…”

“I need to be his father, Felicity,” he continues, adamant, though she doesn’t need any convincing of that fact. “As much as she’ll let me. I need to be that person for him.”

“I know…” He doesn’t let her finish the thought, and her chest gets tighter. The pain in her abdomen is growing sharper again, too. The whole thing is just about agonizing, and she almost wishes to wake up, again, in their apartment with his arms around her. She wishes this could be a dream, too.

“But let me be very clear, Felicity.” His eyes are serious, but his breath still hitches with something like uncertainty. Her big, broken hero. “This changes nothing for us.”

God, if only it were that simple. “Oliver, this changes _everything_.” She remembers this conversation too, only last time, they were on opposite sides. “The only reason you told me is because…”

They can still have kids of their own, she knows that, and so does he. But there’s something so final in the way she feels right now, something that digs at her heart and keeps the tears falling from her eyes. She hates mysteries, but this isn’t something that’s going to be solved in one afternoon, maybe that’s what hurts the most.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says, reaching up to swipe her cheeks with his thumbs. “I want to share my whole life with you, and he’s a part of that now.”

Right. The ring. She’s holding it again, she realizes, even as the pain continues to grow.

“We can talk more later,” she tells him, dropping the chain and reaching for the morphine drip. “You’re going to have to keep holding onto that for a while.”

He frowns, like he doesn’t like the idea, and frankly, she doesn’t either. But it’s practical. It makes sense, and that’s the kind of thing she needs to tether herself to right now. The few and far between.

Oliver makes no move to leave the room as she settles under the dull weight of the painkillers, just leans beside her bed and takes her hand, and she’s glad for that, too, despite everything. Before she slips back into unconsciousness, the last thing she hears him say – just like in her last memory of them together – is “I love you.”

This time, she can say it back. And she does.


End file.
